Routledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold

<p><em>The Routledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold</em> brings together a wealth of scholarship on one of the foremost innovators in European theatre. It presents a detailed picture of the Russian director’s work from when it first emerged on the modern stage to its multifarious present-day manifestations.</p><p>By combining an historical focus with the latest contemporary research from an international range of perspectives and authors, this collection marks an important moment in Meyerhold studies as well as offering a new assessment of his relation to today's theatre-making. Its dynamic blend of research is presented in five sections: Histories enlarges on more conventional subjects like the grotesque and Biomechanics, to overlooked topics such as Meyerhold's ‘failed’ projects and his work in film; Collaborations and Connections extends understandings of Meyerhold’s well-known collaborative capacities to consider new cultural influences and lesser known working relationships; Sources engages with hitherto untapped material in Meyerhold’s oeuvre by reproducing and contextualising previously untranslated primary sources on his work; Practitioner Voices offer lively, on the ground, testimony of the contemporary impact of Meyerhold's practice; Meyerhold in New Contexts maps the routes of his practice across continents and examines ways in which his work is being applied in a number of contemporary scenarios, such as motion capture, computer-based 3D visualisations, and the ‘new normal’ of digital pedagogy.</p><p>This is a key resource for students and scholars of European Theatre, acting theory, and actor training, as well as for those more broadly interested in the socio-political impact of theatre.</p> <p><strong>Part I: Histories</strong></p><p>Part I: Histories</p><p>Introduction</p><p>Stefan Aquilina</p><p>1.<b> </b>Vsevolod Meyerhold and Cinema</p><p>Anna Kovalova </p><p>2.<b> </b>Meyerhold, the Musician<br><i>Nathan Thomas</i> </p><p>3.<b> </b>Meyerhold in the 1930s: Language, Text, Performance </p><p>Anna Muza</p><p>4. Meyerhold’s <i>Hamlet</i>: An Unrealised Dream </p><p>Michelle Assay </p><p>5. Looking at Meyerhold’s Unseen Theatre</p><p>Amy Skinner </p><p>6. Performing Communism, or, What if we Took Meyerhold’s Politics Seriously?</p><p>Teemu Paavolainen </p><p>Part II: Collaborations and Connections </p><p>Introduction</p><p>Stefan Aquilina</p><p>7. Meyerhold and Stanislavsky: Forty Years of Cordial Disagreement</p><p>Marie-Christine Autant-Mathieu </p><p>8.<b> </b>An Unknown Legacy: Uncovering Traces of Savva Mamontov’s Work in Meyerhold’s Conditional Theatre</p><p>Donatella Gavrilovich</p><p>9. Meyerhold’s Female Collaborators</p><p>Stefan Aquilina</p><p>10. The Influence of Giovanni Grasso on Meyerhold’s Works, Theories, and Biography</p><p>Gabriele Sofia </p><p>11. Toward Conscious and Independent Action: Pyotr Lesgaft’s System of Physical Education as Inspiration for Meyerhold’s Biomechanics<br><i>Małgorzata Jabłonska</i></p><p>12. Meyerhold and Trotsky </p><p>Robert Leach </p><p>Part III: Sources</p><p>Introduction</p><p>Jonathan Pitches</p><p>13. The Commedia Dell’arte Origins of Biomechanics: Actor Training and Collective Creation at the Borodinskaia Street Studio</p><p>Dassia N. Posner </p><p>The Borodinskaia Street Studio: Documents on Actor Training and Collective Creation</p><p>Translated and edited by Dassia N. Posner</p><p>14. Fragments of a Creative life: Introduction to Five New Sources<i>Stefan Aquilina </i></p><p>Letters to Anton Chekhov, 1899–1904 </p><p>Comments by Doctor Dapertutto on ‘The Denial of Theatre’ by Yury Aikhenvald, 1914 </p><p>Theatre Pamphlets I: On Dramaturgy and Theatre Culture, 1921 </p><p>From Meyerhold’s Speech at the Discussion ‘Creative Methods at the Meyerhold Theatre’, 25 December 1930 </p><p>On the Spatial Composition of Performance, 2 April 1936 </p><p>Part IV: Practitioner Voices</p><p>Introduction</p><p>Jonathan Pitches</p><p>15. A Theatre Company as a Meyerholdian Experiment in Grotesque </p><p>Paul Stebbings and Phil Smith </p><p>16. The Evolution of Proper Job: Working with Meyerhold in the Contemporary British Theatre </p><p>James Beale, Franc Chamberlain, and Chloe Whitehead </p><p>17. Biomechanical diasporas: Practitioner Perspectives on the Transmission of Meyerhold’s Techniques<b></b><i>Marcelo Bulgarelli, Terence Mann (Chapman), Claudio Massimo Paternò, and Robert Reid</i></p><p>18. Transmission Impossible</p><p>Ralph Räuker</p><p>19. Decoding the Riddle: Applying Meyerhold’s Conception of the Director’s Explication</p><p>Bryan Brown and Olya Petrakova</p><p>Part Vi: Meyerhold in New Contexts: Transnational Migrations </p><p>Introduction</p><p>Stefan Aquilina</p><p>20. Meyerhold’s Influence on Twentieth-century Japanese Theatre</p><p>Min Tian </p><p>21.<b> </b>Nesting dolls: Sketches in Search of Meyerhold in Australia</p><p>Ian Maxwell and Chris Hay</p><p>22. An Unexpected Triangle: Politis, Meyerhold, and Karaghiozis in Interwar Greece</p><p>Antonis Glytzouris </p><p>23. Biomechanical Resonances in Turkey: The Working Method of Studio Oyuncuları</p><p>Burç İdem Dinçel </p><p>24. Meyerhold’s Influence on the Production Processes of PERFORMA TEATRO (Brazil) <i>Arlete Cavaliere </i></p><p>Interdisciplinarities</p><p>Jonathan Pitches</p><p>Part Vii: Meyerhold in New Contexts: Interdisciplinarities</p><p>Introduction</p><p>Jonathan Pitches</p><p>25. Meyerhold in the 21st Century: The Meeting Points of Biomechanics and Postdramatic Performance</p><p>Diana Monteiro Toombs </p><p>26.<b> </b>The New Meyerhold Theatre: Visualising a Lost Architectural Experiment</p><p>Rachel Hann </p><p>27. Theatrical Biomechanics and Movement Science</p><p>Darren Tunstall </p><p>28.<b> </b>Biomechanics in Lockdown: Teaching Meyerhold in the age of COVID-19 </p><p>Jonathan Pitches </p>